The main role of metaphor in economic discourse is essential in facilitating our understanding of some business situations or concepts. This article offers a comprehensive analysis of English business war metaphors in their immediate context of use and their Arabic equivalents as they naturally occur in authentic business texts. The data of the study are drawn from business articles on BBC, CNN, Financial Times and Project Syndicate websites. The study departs from the traditional view of metaphor as a linguistic expression that has only an aesthetic value in the text and it examines how metaphors shape our perception of the business world as they express business ideas. The study reveals that Arabic and English business metaphorical expressions share both similar and different cognition modes and hence four strategies of translating English war metaphors into Arabic are discussed: SL war metaphor is rendered into its comparable metaphor in Arabic using literal translation; SL war source domain is shifted into another TL source domain; an English metaphor is toned down into an Arabic non-metaphor and finally an English non-metaphor is shifted into an Arabic metaphor.

This study is designed to evaluate the two academic translation training master’s programs at two local public universities in Palestine in view of burgeoning market demands. The study reveals the weaknesses and strengths in both training programs, a step which is believed to be necessary to evaluate trainers’ current practices and provide formative data about these programs and programs operating in similar contexts. To achieve this objective, the modules of the courses, the teaching and assessment methods and the challenges facing implementing and developing the curricula are all studied, bearing in mind the job market. Two questionnaires were also administered to students and translation professionals. The questionnaires address the current market demands for translator training, the performance level of novice translators, the nature of the courses and the challenges that are likely to face developing and implementing the curricula, and the methods of teaching and assessment. The study findings reveal that there are significant shortcomings in the curricula, namely the theoretical training is overemphasized and stakeholders’ involvement in the review and design of the translation program curricula remains significantly undervalued. Finally, the study identifies the emerging translation text genres that occupy a significant niche in the local translation market.